Chapter Twenty-Two of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Please note: This is a weekly post

Pendoling Curses! Jess halted. Pulled back. Lost balance. And sat with a painful crash on the rocky track.

He’d known better than to bound along this thread of a trail, that unexpected dangers could rear at any moment – venomous darting dragons, hungry cats. But with the descent so steep it wasn’t easy to hold back. And he hadn’t expected the trail to end at a precipitous drop.

Back on his feet, he brushed himself down and peered over the edge. And grunted. The native fauna might manage it but no matter his hurry he wasn’t foolish enough to try. He’d have to back up and find another way down. He had passed a much-overgrown trail that branched off some way back but had ignored it as veering off in the wrong direction. Eastward when he wanted to head more to the west. Regardless, he now retraced his steps and followed that trail instead.

Thorns snagged the deep yellow of his suit, some long enough to pierce his skin and draw beads of blood that stained the silken fabric. This wasn’t the track Cela-Byi had taken, he was sure of that. But was he to return to where he’d met the hunters and try for a different trail? At this rate the day would close around him before he was halfway to Toki-dow. His descent on this track wasn’t fast, but it was a descent. Once on more even and easier ground, he could scoot across to the west where that first day out in the flyer he’d seen the Itamakku dow.

The ground evened out but the way didn’t become easier. A swamp lay ahead of him. Or was it an overflowed river? But what difference, either way his progress was blocked, and he wasn’t desperate enough to chance it. That raft of floating logs could turn out to be crocs. Not to mention the potential for dragons – of every size and feeding strategy. And those heavyweight wide-horned beasts: water buffalos if he remembered the Tech-issued information pack. They reminded him too keenly of the dlangi on Simmah Zayin.

He backed up to where he’d seen a fallen tree and checked for both venomous and strangling dragons. With a slump to a sit, he buried his heavy head in his hands, not a good thought for himself. A zem, his clutch’s safety might depend on his knowledge yet here he was lost, unable to locate himself despite he’d flown over this terrain and committed it to memory. The knowledge he’d taken from Cela-Byi while in the psi-sphere didn’t help him find where he was either. What good is knowledge when all it does is to lead you astray.

Lost. With night closing around him.

With no Techs to come rescue him.

To wander in darkness through unfamiliar terrain, amongst fauna which likely would consider him a tasty bite? Or to stay by that fallen tree and wait out the night?

Why had he brought no water with him? There were streams, everywhere gushing and chuckling, and fast-flowing rivers wouldn’t harbour bugs and mites and other intestinal threats. Would they? But he couldn’t go looking, not in this darkness.

This darkness. But it was only dark beneath the trees. Above the swamp, or lake, or whatever the open water was, the sky was peppered with a million suns. Around one of those suns was an orbiting planet, the place of his birth. No memory of his mother, only of his father’s sister, his milk-mother.

He returned his thoughts to the present and shuffled his back and his feet. This fallen tree wasn’t the most comfortable of places to wait out the night. Cela-Byi’s hold on him was beginning to cost him. He’d prefer to break that obsession.

But was it an obsession? He supposed so. Besides, with his sister Jilly dead who would serve as milk-mother to their offspring?

His sister’s death, an inconvenience said the Techs who removed her body before he could mourn her. And Jess had drawn back his fist and felled the unsuspecting Tech.

Unsuspecting, that’s the only thing that saved him from worse punishment, for his time spent on Colabri could not be called that. Unsuspecting. Yet as every Monza knew, the Techs dwelt as much in the Monzas’ heads as in each other’s. Unsuspecting. Disbelieving more like, that a Monza could swing such a blow at a Tech, that no matter their anger the Monza would ever submit to the all-controlling immortal Techs.

Jess swung his head and spat. And had a Tech been near he’d had felled that one too. His sister should not have been in the mine that day. Jess had told the Techs that she wasn’t fit for work, that she should see a medic. But the all-controlling immortal Techs knew that the Monza would always submit to them. And like an obedient pet, he had.

And now those all-controlling Techs were tampering with the Itamakku genes, and others of their kind on this and other planets. They said it was to enable the Monza, despite the loss of their females, to live on. And yet, as Joel had related, on Adamzal there was no shortage of breeding females, no shortage of Amzals who, anyway, were only Monza by another name. The Techs ‘harvested’ them to work the mines on dark Kreegirn, that planet that swirled at the very edge of the Monza’s home galaxy.

Again, Jess looked beyond the trees to the panoply of suns.

The Techs’ GM Programme was a cover for whatever their true plans. Jess wasn’t alone in thinking that. Though what their plans, he had no idea.

The Fire-keepers of Colabri had shown him ways to set aside all thoughts of the Techs. Yet sitting here in the forest, on the tree by the swamp, that technique slipped his control. An angry growl crashed through his body. Three Techs had died. Jess closed his eyes and looked away: to cause the death of a Tech was beyond unforgivable. Yet he hadn’t caused it, their own arrogance had. He had told them beware of the waves. Even so, he would happily cause the death of every Tech. Every Tech.

How then would you leave this planet? And every Tech on Sipaziann Ayin wasn’t every Tech in the multi-spheres.

Jess rubbed his eyes. He wanted to sleep yet dared not. The Techs…the word came as a sharp gnarl in his head. The Techs and the Monza were said to be one species. Yet according to Joel, the Techs self-replicated. Jess buried his head in his hands again while he took that thought deeper.

As an observer in the Techs’ GM Programme he had encountered many strange species, some of which self-replicated. But it was always the females who cloned, and then only in the absence of viable males. Question: Were the Techs females?

But why then didn’t they mate with the Monza males?

Ah, because without the fertile Monza females, the males didn’t mature.

But then another question: Why were all the Monza members of the GM Programme male? Why not female? A female Monza wouldn’t be triggered by the Itamakku, or any other modified species. Jess hadn’t delved into the background of all his clutch, but he knew there wasn’t a female amongst them, and the prime criterion for inclusion in the Programme was to have no family connections.

So many questions. He needed to speak with Antel. Antel might know more, he was always off on his own, studying the local fauna.

*

How he’d managed to stray so far off course Jess didn’t know. But that fact accepted he had abandoned the idea of following Cela-Byi to her settlement and now was on the track back to the farm when iridescent flashes alerted Jess to a flier’s approach. He supposed he was glad to be rescued.

The flier landed in a treeless patch off to Jess’s left. In his absence, his deputy Armar wouldn’t leave the base, so this would be Kookka. And Kookka would berate him. Jess waited. He was right on both counts.

“You idiotic senseless dolt!” Kookka ranted as he tramped through vines and herbage to reach him. “You, my friend, have a death wish and I ought to leave you to complete it.”

Jess watched him, a nod, slow, deliberate. “You could be right. But whether I wish it or not, it’s to happen.”

Kookka gave an exasperated roll of his eyes. “Not if you don’t give in to it.”

Jess stepped away from Kookka’s determined hug and pushed him an arm’s length away. “You think it can be denied? Wait till your time comes. And it will, it’ll come for every one of our clutch. And one by one, we all will die.”

Kookka heaved a sigh, a shake of his head and looked away.

“You don’t believe it?”

“I believe you’ve lost your fight, and that’s not like you. I believe you need food, water, and sleep. Get your butt into that flier and I’ll take you back to the farm.”

“I’m walking back,” Jess said, which brought another roll of eyes. “I want to trigger a holo.”

That caught at Kookka’s curiosity. Head atilt, eyes asquint, he waited.

“I’ve the language now, I want to hear what the holo says.”

“You’ve…?” Kookka stared at Jess.

“I have their language,” he repeated. “Took it in the psi-sphere.”

“And how close to her were you when you…took it?”

Jess attempted a laugh, to brush it aside. “And who says I took it from a female? There are male Itamakku, you know. I’ve met some.”

“And do these males have beards?”

Jess’s hand went straight to his chin. He groaned. “How can it grow so quick, overnight?” And it was no longer soft, no longer silky. As bristly as a forest boar.

“Well, you’re still alive,” Kookka said. “That’s something. Come on, let’s get in that flier. We can walk back from the farm. I’m curious myself to know what they say.”

*

“Do you ever wonder about the Techs?” Jess asked, tentative, once he and Kookka were on the trail back to the perimeter. “Like, what they’re really about?”

Kookka didn’t speak until he’d slipped and skidded down the scree-covered slope. As he reached the bottom he turned back to Jess. “I’ll tell you what I find myself thinking. That this is the first time we’ve been without their intrusive company since—”

“Since we left the nursery?”

“They’ve always been there. And we know they get in our heads and—”

“Manipulate our thoughts?”

“Yea, but how much? Then along comes Joel with his story and – I don’t know what to believe any more.”

Jess stopped walking, hands to his mouth, almost like praying. Despite he’d had the night to think about this, still he’d come to no conclusions, just thinking round and round. “What if we Monza used to be like the Techs, but they modified us?”

“Yea? Why? I mean, why would they?”

Jess had no answer to that.

“But it gives us more reason to hate them.” Kookka continued the walk out to the perimeter and the holos, no waiting for Jess’s response.

Jess was slow to follow, considering what Kookka had said.

“Have you ever known any female Monza working this Programme?” Jess asked when he did catch up.

Kookka slowed his pace. “Now you mention it, no.”

“Yet a female Monza wouldn’t be triggered by the fertile females.”

Kookka didn’t pick up his pace, clearly still thinking. “No, that doesn’t hold. If Joel and Antel and all the mythic tales are right, then a triggered female would become a milk-mother. Isn’t that so?”

Jess grunted. He wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking anyway, but now he dropped it. And they were at the holo, that same one Cela-Byi had ignored and walked right through. Jess didn’t want to see it, he wanted only to hear it. But regardless, either Kookka or himself had to trigger it.

He left Kookka to do that while he kept his back turned. He heard Kookka’s groan, imagined his grimace. “And you say your fertile friend ignored it and walked straight through?”

Jess didn’t answer, concentrating on what the holo was saying now that he had the language.

The voice issued from every direction. “This is a place for spirits and gods. No Itamakku walk here.”

“So that’s why she thinks me a god,” Jess murmured. “Star spirit Kija.”

“Well, she got the direction right,” Kookka said. “Care to translate? You have the language, I don’t.”

“The holo says for no Itamakku to walk beyond here, that this is a place for spirits and gods.”

“Then Joel was right?”

“Not just me, all of us. And I suppose the Techs too.”

Kookka slapped Jess on his back, gentle, friendly. “Come on back to the fliers. We’ve now got plenty food for thought. Though I’m not sure it’s any more palatable than that crap Canipse and his operatives serve up.”

“And it doesn’t explain the skinning. I thought it would.”

They were almost back to the fliers when Kookka suggested, “Maybe the Itamakku gods don’t wear skins?”

“What, so the Itamakku believed that youngster to be transformed to a god?”

“Try this,” Kookka suggested. “Only gods are allowed beyond the marked perimeter, so to trespass is to be transformed. That Itamakki wasn’t dead, he was a god.”

“I have a big problem with that,” Jess said, and held out his arms as if to demonstrate. “Cela-Byi thought me a god, and yet I’m not skinless.” He bobbed his head at Kookka and climbed into the flier.

He needed to speak with Cela-Byi. He wanted to know what this skinning-thing meant to her and her people. But he also needed to eat, to drink and to sleep. And this time there’d be no walking to Toki-dow. He’d drop in by flier. They thought him a star-spirit, a god, so that’s what he’d be.

To be continued next week

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